Once again Gavin has completely outdone himself and included so much effort and detail into this painting - it is truly a masterpiece! I'll wait until I have the jpg's to post to describe all the amazing details and special little tidbits that he always incorporates into his work, but let's just say as usual ALL the details are picture perfect. Also speechless how brilliant my fiance is! Best christmas gift ever!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Just wanted to bring to your attention a new Blood Bowl tournament happening in Oklahoma next January. I met the tournament organizers Scott (@fatfinley on twitter) and Steve (@kilowog2814) at the Chaos Cup this year. Very chill couple of guys who are involved with a podcast called Couch Pirate Radio (check out their recent Jam Session for some rather delayed Chaos Cup review!).

This will be their first tournament and from what I gathered the first blood bowl tournament ever in Oklahoma, so even though unfortunately it's a little far for me to attend, I wanted to support them by purchasing some dice and pimping their shit! Check out the wicked website Scott has put together at www.orclahomabowl.com!

Everywhere should have a blood bowl tournament within reasonable travel distance, so if you are in the area - get out there and support these guys. The tournament is only TEN BUCKS if you pre-register and is only a 1 day tournament so it's pretty accessible even for coaches new to the blood bowl tournament scene. The Chaos Cup was the first tournament for these guys but from checking out the rule pack they have clearly learned a lot and Orclahoma Bowl looks like it's going to be a blast!!

Some really cool points about the rules pack for Orclahoma Bowl

Love the weather combinations (obviously a homage to the local weather) I also always like seeing ALL tables being similarly affected by the weather.

Any team being able to buy greenskin star players is pretty thematic, I also like the highlander rule that could see teams counting on certain powerful star players being down a player if they come up against another team doing the same (I see this happening possibly with Ripper, a S6 troll without Really Stupid is a great thing!)

The inaugural blingtoof's gitbash is in the books and I fully succeeded (and I mean FULLY) in winning the "Best Fouler" award. I will save the details for further down the post but suffice to say that while second fouler had nearly triple the fouling points that third fouler had, he was still over 40 (yes FORTY) points behind me. MUHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

"Best Fouler" trophy - bag of rats with chain

Game 1 was vs Tyler and his Orc team. There are some pics below. Unfortunately for him he left his thrower too exposed early after receiving the kick and I managed to (after fouling for that turn of course) blitz his thrower down and steal the ball. I stalled for a turn but by then a lot of his players were off the pitch so I scored to get more back on (to foul - lol). He very nearly started the game without taking an upgrade package but I made sure he did, that would have just been unfair. So he gave one blitzer +AG and someone +AV I think. In the second half I stalled too long and he caught my ghoul, then managed to work his way up the pitch to score. To be honest I wasn't too upset as I didn't really want to be winning all my games.

Game 2 was vs Chris (the tournament organizer) and his underworld. We all got a normal skill to give to a goblin and a normal skill for anyone. I gave my Fan Favourite goblin Sure Feet and my Leader mummy Grab. Chris got a quick 2-0 lead built up, and was really smart about avoiding my fouling. I did foul out a fair number of his guys including his pumpkin troll (see pics 2 & 3 from below). From there I caught up with two quick touchdowns of my own, but towards the end of the game he was looking pretty sure to get a third and I just took advantage of the proximity of his players to foul more!

Game 3 was vs. Robert and his Orc team (there must have been at least four orc teams out of fourteen coaches). We again got two normal skills to distribute so I gave Sure Feet to my goblin with Sneaky Git and Guard to a wight. He had a pretty standard non-troll orc team and he was the eventual wooden spoon recipient. I tried to help Rob out a bit as he was obviously new to the game, so I showed him a bit about how to line up blocks so if you only get pushes you can block with another player, etc. I had a lot of trouble knocking down his Orcs (he had a lot of Block) and so suffered my lowest fouling points game in the tournament.

So I ended day one with a respectable 1 win / 1 loss / 1 tie (especially considering how frequently I ignored the ball!) and a massive 61 (yes, SIXTY ONE) fouling points. The next highest had 40. I found out my next opponent was a chaos pact team so I was looking forward to fouling a bunch of goblins and skaven!

Game 4 was vs. Mark D and his chaos pact team. I gave my last skeleton Dirty Player and last goblin Sneaky Git. He quickly went up 2-0 but my fouling began to take it's toll. I totally ignored the ball for the entire game, and it led to a hilarious conclusion in the final turns of the second half. Marks ogre had kept blitzing towards the ball in my end while I was fouling the rest of his team near the scrimmage line. He managed to get the ogre to pick up the ball and all the way to the end zone. Then he called it - "watch now he's going to go bonehead on the end zone line" and of course - nuffle works with no mystery at all. 3 boneheads in a row gave me a chance to sneak a goblin onto the pitch and help tie up the ogre with a skeleton. In one of my last turns I just decided to throw a two die uphill block and double-kapow'd the ogre, breaking his armour and stunning him for Mark's last turn.

Game 5 was the final game and I was matched up against Craig who was also trying for the fouling award but quite far behind me in points. I gave my Fan Favourite goblin +AG and my wight with Tackle +ST. This was the second underworld team I played, and we both ignored the ball to concentrate on fouling (I did use it to distract him several times - AFTER my foul for that turn of course!) thanks to Stunty & Dirty Player I was quite successful in getting his players off the pitch. He kept throwing the ball into my end to try and keep the game tied. Late in the game, with his last player on the pitch (his troll) he threw a 3 die blitz against my same goblin who blocked Marks ogre down, rolled triple skulls and failed his loner to reroll! I then proceeded to break armour and KO the troll - BOOYAAH! With three turns left and the board empty of underworld players I did manage to score a touchdown (took all three turns cuz I had no rerolls and ghouls were dropping my hand offs!) which very nearly gave Craig the wooden spoon but he did have lots of fouling points which were first tiebreaker.

Day two finished up 1 win / 1 loss and a massive 55 (FIFTY FIVE in two games!!) fouling points, bringing my grand total up to 116, with Craig (my final opponent) next highest with 72. "Best Fouler" was in the bag and I managed a pretty reasonable winning % as well with 2 wins / 2 losses / 1 tie.

Best Fouler

Some other stats, I actually placed 7th overall, which is just into the top 50 percentile (with 14 coaches) and I was 8th for most touchdowns and 10th for most casualties.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Here's my roster for the blingtoof tournament starting tomorrow at meeplemart. Am pretty set on my plan but any tips for massive fouling is much appreciated! I even setup my printed roster with lots of space to track my fouling points!

You read that right, 15 players! I am going all out for the fouling award, we are talking aiming for 80 turns of fouls over 5 games. Definitely expect to have some players ejected. I have the one cheap bribe (50K) available to sanctioned teams and decided to use the double for leader on a mummy.

Going to start w fan favourite goblin on the pitch.

Attempt to sneak on the vanilla gobbo sometime around turn 5-8.

Have 1 skel with dirty player on, save the other for when he gets ejected.

So hopefully late game I still have a dirty player and if I suffer bad ejections will have the gobbo with sneaky git.

Looking for advice regarding whether I play the vanilla skel or 3rd ghoul from the start? Thoughts??

Expect some live tweets tomorrow. Probably less than normal as time at the store is very tight, probably just every foul that results in something (could hopefully be lots of tweets - lol)

You may have heard some mention of the upcoming blingtoof tournament that I am attending this weekend. The rules allow for any team to take any number of standard goblins, goblins get the most bonus skills and there's a way to sneak an extra goblin onto the pitch! What's not to like?!? There's even an award for the most fouling points which is the second most important trophy after winning!

ridiculous shouldpad lol

I have been making last minute tweaks to my list, but regardless of anything else I plan to take 3 standard goblins. This has the benefit of being considered a "sanctioned team" which gives you several benefits

stat and double boosts can be given to big guys (from your upgrade package)

purchase bribes as permanent roster addition (first is 50K)

+ 1 to rolls for cheering fans, brilliant coaching, throw a rock

So I am bringing my undead team and adding 3 goblins and going for the fouling award! This way I can get a cheap bribe and one of the goblins will be able to take "sneaky git" for fouling after my "dirty player(s)" have been kicked out. The bribe can also save your turn if you are trying to sneak a goblin on and fail. My current roster ideas have 14-15 players, muhahaha

Unfortunately I only had two painted goblins for my orc team I can borrow, so I needed a third! The trophies are all bags of rats, so in that vein I have made my third goblin from a monopose figure (as with most of my orc team) carrying a giant rat. Following the theme of my orc team (based on 1999 superbowl champion rams) I plucked a name & jersey number for this gobbo to use. He happened to be the kick return so I gave the goblin a giant shoulderpad. He came out pretty well for an old 4th edition monopose spearman goblin.

ps. Yay, first painting point in.... nearly three months. I might even be able to break 100 this year!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Here I just wanted to compile a quick Deathbowl IX summary. My apologies for how long this has taken, I had no opportunity to post anything while in Ottawa for the tournament due to all the drinking and shenanigans - and once back I had an extremely busy week so this was really my first day with a solid chunk of free time I could devote to compiling the recaps.

In the end I went 1 win/2 losses/1 tie, and finished in 15th place (out of 20) - so another game would have put me on the bottom table! I finished just behind my opponent Colin (orxymandiuz) from game 4 even though we tied so I`m guessing he had less losses than me. Happy I managed to stay above the new kid Kohl who joined us for his first tournament (who won the rising star as he was greatly improved across the tournament) and considering who my losses were to I don't feel too bad about my performance.

Slann are definitely a strong team for the deathbowl format, getting Leap + Very Long Legs is a potent combination. I think next year I may need to try having a super player like Leathan does when the tournament rules offer than option. I will need to practice keeping that player alive too.

Sunday had the final game - I was all the way down on table 4 for the first time all tournament. Was playing against Colin, who I had never met before - very classy dude - I got a little amped up when everyone on the table thought he'd dodged without being next to my blitzer with diving tackle (he had, and it saved me getting a 3rd loss as diving tackle knocked his chance to score down) - and he took it with class and good sportsmanship! Nothing less than I'd expect from most blood bowl coaches!

Mark (halflings) was to my left and Chris (dwarves) was to my right. I've played them both before so there was plenty of trash talking and joking.

So final tournament results for me were 1 win/2 losses/1 tie. Considering the two losses were to 1st/2nd place finishers I am happy with that. Always difficult when you start tournaments with convincing wins, as it puts you against the better coaches.

A quick recap of game 3. By this time was pretty exhausted and it was taking most of my energy just to pay attention to the game. A few quick updates were all I had in me. After the first few updates I needed to focus on the game - only my opponent and I scored all game. Unfortunately instead of ending up as a 3-3 tie, my opponent (Pat from my right in game 2) managed to score an extra touchdown in the last round of turns instead of going the other way (up until that point we'd been trading scoring). Well played to him.

#db9g3 on table two, against elves. #bloodbowl still trying to get the ball

back on the normal deathbowl boards

#db9g3 turn 6 hoping to work my way into scoring position /bloodbowl

pushing up the right side

#db9g3 managed a score passing to a lineman, all tied up 1-1. #whutupshun #bloodbowl

woot, managed to score passing to a lineman

#db9g3 only me and my opponent have scored, it's 3-2 to him right now. 1 turn to go, will take a miracle to get a tie

he managed to score again instead of me, grrrr

So after this game I was 1 win/2 losses (losses were to 1st place - Leathan and eventual 2nd place winner - Pat) so I didn't feel too bad about them but they definitely hurt me in terms of ranking/tournament place.

Recap of game 2, had a bad feeling at the beginning. Leathan is a notoriously tough opponent, because he generally takes a single super player and protects him very well making it terribly difficult to get to grips with him. I knew I would need help against him but with two elf teams going horizontally couldn't see much help coming from them. Good ol' Tom "Cat" (dark elf) was sitting to my left and Pat (pro elf) to my right.

#db9g2 been a tense match, losing 1-0 but have a chance to score in my turn 8 #bloodbowl #pleasenuffleplease

had the ball on the left, needed to stay on my feet - didn't happen

#db9g2 slann can't leap or dodge this game, had later turn in both halves, not good at playing reactive game #bloodbowl

going last definitely didn't help

#db9g2 slann tripping all over themselves. made one successful leap all game :-@ #nufflesucks #damnyounuffle

I think this setup was after Tom's TD

#db9g2 made a rerolled leap only to fail a 3+ dodge with reroll. lots of rerolls failing. #nufflesucks

picked up the ball in 3 tackle zones too!

#db9g2 a chance for a consolation touchdown, but it's in nuffles hands. #notexpectingmuch

Here's my recap of game 1. I was fortunate enough to start on the top table (absolutely sweet table to play on) and it was my slann vs. Robs necromantic (no flesh golems) and Peters pro elves vs. Philippes wood elves. I've played both Rob and Peter before, but this was Philippes first tournament (deathbowl to boot!).

A bit of his inexperience showed, and benefited me greatly - after winning the roll to go first, Philippe failed a "go for it" with reroll moving his second player - basically giving me first turn (though his treeman had a tackle zone on both balls)

#db9g1 slann score on turn 4, possibly the earliest touchdown of the day #whutupshun#bloodbowl setup again already

pro elf & necro still have their turn 4, 1-0 slann!!

#db9g1 almost pull off the craziest pickup after scattering ball can't be caught by a bunch of pansy elves. #bloodbowl

at least four failed 4+ catch rolls by elven players

#db9g1 huge scrum in the middle of the board. nobody can hold onto a ball for long. #bloodbowl

slann are always a threat - even with few players on the pitch

Peter managed to score vs. Philippe in the closing turns of the first half, putting us both 1-0 over our opponents. Things are a little hazy now but I think I recall trying to stop him as well because I'd protected myself from getting scored on by Rob - but it could be the other way round and I helped him to score so Rob couldn't!

#db9g1 setup after 3 turns due to slann pulling off a crazy passing play #whutupshun ps. I still had the other ball

only 7 slann left standing, still 2-0 up

#db9g1 2 elf teams going sideways controlling the balls. necro team can't win, just failed another go for it #bloodbowl

Rob just couldn't get any rolls to go his way this game

#db9g1 slann pull off another insane passing play, bringing the ball all the way across the pitch #whutupshun

if I had counted better I could've pushed one more last turn and scored a third.

After the above pic, Peter managed to knock over my player (the ball scattered into the endzone) and put three tackle zones on the ball, he then pushed for his own touchdown and failed with a "go for it" (2+ with reroll). I nearly made it 3 touchdowns on my last turn by leaping onto the ball but failed the 5+ pickup with a 2. That was ok though because Peter failed to get a second touchdown by failing another "go for it" (2+ with reroll) which brought a mighty cheer to our table.

twice Peter failed 2+ with reroll for a 2nd touchdown to tie me for the table

So after game one, I won 2-0 tied on casualties and stayed on the top table to face Leathan (the eventual tournament winner) and his norse team (with 2 ST5 Ulfs and a MV9 Sure Hands, Sure Feet, Dodge runner!!)

Friday, October 21, 2011

Well I completely failed at doing any painting at all on the team I wanted to bring this year (that I started painting immediately after last year - can you say EPIC fail???) but I feel I have sufficient excuse with how busy things have been (buying a house, staging our condo to sell, being the only guy left in our department at work) so I don't feel too bad about it - there's always next year!! For any NAF members you can check out the NAF thread for more info if you are interested!

In the end I couldn't even decide on a single roster, so I am bringing both the slann and elf models and will see how things pan out over tonight. I have 3 of my preferred rosters printed out (1 slann / 2 elf) which should be pretty sufficient to make a choice tonight. If anything the slann would only change a single skill on one catcher so I can just cross that out. If I end up re-doing the pro elf roster completely I could be in for some last minute scribbling!

who wouldn't wanna get their hands on this trophy!!

Just a quick update to remind everyone I will be doing some live tweeting during the games (should be easy when I have 3 turns to do nothing!!) probably with more pics since it's hosted at the T.O.s house - so wifi should be available. Depending on how quickly my games finish I will either do individual game recaps, or possibly day 1 / day 2 recaps on both blogs. My goal is to try and improve upon my 6th place finish last year, note to self (if using slann) - diving catch provides +1 to catching accurate passes!!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

HOTpanda over at the Chaos Manifesto is having a little give away to mark the anniversary of his 100th post. All it takes is a follow to be eligible and if you pimp his post, you are entered for a secret prize too! I'll take the mystery box!

Monday, October 10, 2011

Yesterday I got my first taste of RPG'ing in any form since about grade eight! I have been pretty excited to try out the Deathwatch RPG from Fantasy Flight Games. Who doesn't want to be a Space Marine! The group was Jason (playing a Blood Angel assault marine, Sepheren) Lorand (playing an Imperial Fist tactical marine, Alexander), Matt (playing a Space Wolf long fang, Baldur) and myself (playing a Flesh Tearer apothecary, Marius - thanks to my fiance for the vampire name to "borrow") and Mike acted as GM.

Marius - Flesh Tearers Apothecary

To start off with, we're playing pretty fast and loose with the rules. At least to begin with it's easier than trying to apply that whole huge rulebook from the start. We're all previous GW employees so our GM (Mike of shiftedmatrix) was pretty comfortable avoiding things like demeanours, since Matt knew how to act like a Space Wolf, etc. (aka Awwooooooooooo) We had 60 points of Requisition (to get equipment) which was spent on a chain-axe for me, heavy bolter suspensors for Matty, an auspex for Lorand (became a running joke all day long) and some special bolter rounds.

The background for this mission was a previous uninhabitable death world "Taros" on the fringe of Imperial space has suddenly spurted life in terms of some heavy vegetation and other life signs being detected through long range scans. We've been charged with a recon mission to determine what is occurring on this planet.

We were dropped for deep strike in a land speeder by Techmarine Aros (one of Mikes old characters) from a Storm Raven gunship and flew in towards the solitary radar ping we'd managed to pick up. Pretty quickly Baldur was able to smell blood and we found some near mutilated cattle like animals.

So after landing several hundred metres away from the blip we track in on foot to find a tower with a radar dish on top (we actually knew it was a tower before entering the clearing thanks to a slip of the tongue by Mike - lol). Alexander and Sepheren examined the terminal at the base of the tower, but managed to fail their tech-use attempts so badly that they did nothing but set off the alarm and release 4 gun drones!

investigating the tower, attacked by gun drones

Alexander took some damage from one of the drones while Matty took one out, Sepheren took out a couple in melee and I blasted away ineffectually. During the scrap the radar started turning to point off into the forest so we decided to book it (not directly but generally in that direction) in case we were about to be ambushed but to ensure some confusion was sown Sepheren decided to jet over the tower and drop a krak grenade on the radar equipment. Recon mission achieved LOL (We began to use the term "RECON'd" from this point to basically mean blow the crap out of it!) I also tried to heal Alexander and failed spectacularly (calling into question my ability to tell between my chain axe and the narthecium!)

Through the forest Sepheren was alert enough to spot a huge log trap swinging down in time to easily perform some evasive maneuvers and save our asses. Regardless of Alexander wanting us to all jump out of the flying land speeder to investigate we decided to hang tight until we came upon a small farming village.

We investigated all the buildings, finding more murdered cows and a dead Tau civilian, finally in the final building we found a power generator which when turned on powered up a computer system of some sort. Alexander had more luck with this version, finding a projected path for something to land nearby and an actual path along with a countdown showing somewhere between several hours and perhaps up to two days before the object landed.

I'm throwing the map in here to break up all the text. We landed near the X with the red circle, we almost got ambushed at the small x between there and the red square (the village we investigated) near the circular "danger" area (where we get ambushed!)

map of the newly vegetated area of Taros

When we tried to make our way back to the land speeder, a Tau piranha flew some warning "strafing" runs between us and the speeder. Alexander tried to take out the engine and only succeeded in convincing the gun drones they should disembark. Sepheren used his jump pack to scamble for cover. Matty missed the gun drone he fired at completely and I blasted one out of the sky. Sepheren then managed to jump and land right on the piranha with a threatening krak grenade and force the Tau to land.

We "negotiated" with the Tau, they were pretty insolent and I wanted to just end them, but in the end we followed them to this area they were too scared to investigate (wussys!!) and promised between ourselves we would go back and xeno-cide those rude cow faces!

They led us to the obviously scary dark area (we could have found it, should have shot them!) and took off like the scaredy cows they are! Being space marines we weren't worried at all and flew in on the land speeder.

We found these green "cloning" sacs in a large patch, many empty but some appearing full. We couldn't tell much from the outside so I blew one open with my bolt pistol so I could investigate. I was able to determine there was some similarity to Orks in the spores I found. At that point a giant cross between a troll and an ork crashed into the clearing howling and slammed into the land speeder. For the first time I had a really high initiative, so once Sepheren had maneuvered the speeder out of the way I charged in. Throughout this battle we fought three of these "trollorks" - the first I cleaved a huge chunk out of him before Baldur blasted him to bits. The second got the drop on Alexander and hurt him pretty bad. Marius kept showing up Sepheren as I had several headshots with my chain axe causing large amounts of damage and dodged all their attacks back while the assault marine was somewhat ineffective. The final trollork landed on the speeder causing a bunch of damage to it and sending Baldur flying. After smacking Sepheren a bit, Baldur and Alexander were able to take it down with combined weight of fire.

strange spore sacs, ambushed by crazy troll/ork hybrids

I then managed to heal Alexander completely and Sepheren flew us outta there back to a clearing in the forest. Our plan was to head back to the Tau settlement we had found but we called the game there due to the Leafs game starting pretty soon and we didn't want to end in the middle of an encounter.

All in all a very satisfying re-introduction to RPG'ing. Looking forward to our next session!

ps. I called this Session 1 as it was my first time, but the other three characters had played a bit before - so if any of them ever write anything up I'll link to it and call it Session 0 ;-)

WIP-REVIEW: More scenery for Robotech!
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First update of this year!
I've been building the scenery sets from 4Ground I have so far:
Primera actualización del año!
He estado armando los sets de escen...